“The engines!” Gwil shouted as he ran back to the horde of fleeing prisoners. “Smash the engines!”

Cort, Brock, and fifty fighters formed the frontline. Using the space that Gwil had created, they had positioned themselves between the Taluses and the rest of the escapees.

Fragile humans against ten stone monstrosities. Without Brock, they would’ve already been trampled. He raced up and down the line, throwing himself against the enemies.

The defenders had adopted a sort of dance that also served as a controlled retreat. Wielding spears and amputated statue limbs, they rotated to meet whichever Taluses were not occupied by Brock. They’d crowd in close to keep the Taluses from gaining any speed, and then fall back, impeding the enemies as much as possible until Brock came crashing through in relief. Then the mob would shift to flow against the other Taluses.

The conflict drifted like a fallen leaf. The strategy worked in that it kept them alive, but they were losing ground fast, and all the escapees were being pushed back toward the cliff’s edge.

They defeated one Talus—Brock had punched through its Kaia heart. But nine remained.

Leira grabbed hold of Gwil as he ran past. Ansoir stood beside her. He had his fist stuffed in his mouth. Blood and tears trickled down his hand.

“Gwil, remember these are just normal people. Try to make us a path to the manor.”

He nodded and leapt into the fray.

Brock threw himself on the ground in front of three enemy Taluses, tripping them up and causing them to stomp all over his flailing body as they tried to get past. He’d lost a couple pieces of himself, and the litter had been smashed to bits.

Cort was doing some serious damage with an absurdly large iron hammer that he’d found on the ground. Gwil recognized it because while he’d been running around with the statues earlier, the elephant-man Talus had dropped that weapon immediately, not from taking any damage, but because it was so heavy his arm had snapped off when he started moving.

Cort appeared more than fit for the giant weapon. He raised it over his head and smashed the engine of a Talus that Brock was tangling with.

Cort flew back from the explosion. Gwil went to help him get up.

Black smog poured from Brock’s joints.

Not one death.

Gwil picked up a golden leg and, holding it like a spear, charged one of the other Taluses that was bludgeoning Brock.

He slid under the stone fist as it slammed down and smashed through the engine’s casing with the toes of the metal foot.

Seven.

Nirva rushing like a river, Gwil turned and swung the leg into the engine of the third Talus.

The Talus partially blocked the blow, and the impact made Gwil drop the leg.

He jumped in and clung to the Talus’s torso with one hand. He dumped all his Nirva into the other. A hush stole over the whispering voices.

Gwil’s fingers became like the talons of a dreadful beast, and he plunged his hand through the engine’s casing, grabbed hold of whatever he could, and ripped his hand free.

Flickering Kaia oozed out, and then a detonation broke apart the Talus’s body and threw Gwil back.

“Whaaa!” Gwil screamed. His hand looked like a candle in a furnace. Liquified bone and flesh dripped like melting ice cream.

Six.

Gwil pulled his sleeve over what remained of his hand, trying to prevent more of it from leaking away. Then he tried to help Brock get up.

But Brock stood on his own, and, rolling and sputtering, pursued his brethren.

The enemy Taluses were growing wise to the prisoners’ strategy and began spreading out, taking wider angles to try to get around the flank.

“Yo!” Gwil called. He pointed toward the front door of the manor.

Cort nodded.

They caught up to Brock as he slammed through the row of Taluses, and then Cort shouted, “Gwil!”

It seemed Cort had forgotten that Gwil only had one hand at the moment, because he tossed him the giant hammer.

Gwil had also forgotten that he only had one hand. He reached out to catch the shaft of the hammer. The very hefty thing crushed his foot. He squealed and hopped up and down, clutching it.

Cort, waving his arms like a maniac, screamed at the rest of the escapees, “Run! Get to the manor!”

Brock had knocked two Taluses over; they lay stuck on their backs like turtles.

As Gwil dragged the hammer along, he wondered how Cort wielded it so easily. He put all his Nirva into his left arm so that he could lift the tremendous weight, which caused the mangled one to start gushing blood again.

Gwil spun, using the momentum of the hammer’s head, and obliterated the engine of one of the fallen Taluses.

At the same time, a group of prisoners swarmed the other and mashed its engine with their pickaxes.

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But the remaining four Taluses had broken through and were amidst the mob of escapees.

Chaos. They fled like ants from beneath an overturned stone. Cort was still shouting about the manor and the door.

Gwil left Cort’s hammer on the ground and picked up a trident, which he could handle more easily with one hand.

Cort and the other fighters were forcing their way toward the manor.

Gwil jumped up onto the nearest Talus’s head and smacked it with the trident, then leapt away as it tried to clobber him.

He landed on the head of another one. “Wow! The Burger really fucked you guys over. I guess he doesn’t love rocks that much.”

Gwil knew that wasn’t true—the traces of Nirva told him as much. But he thought it might piss them off.

It did. All the Taluses forgot about the prisoners and rushed toward Gwil. Brock was right on their heels, lopsided by a lamed leg. His engine spat sparks and smoke.

“Go away, Brock!” Gwil yelled over his shoulder as he ran back to buy his comrades more space.

***

Cort slammed against the manor’s front doors. He gripped both handles, rattled the lever, and then tried to shake the doors off their hinges. The wave that was his fleeing comrades crashed into him, smushing him against the door.

Leira appeared underfoot, having crawled through the legs of the mob. “Move. You’re doing it wrong,” she said, pulling herself up.

“I’m not doing it wrong!” Cort grunted. “It’s locked!”

“Don’t be so polite!” Leira yelped. “Bust it down.”

Cort adjusted himself to try to get better leverage and, in that moment, heard a thunderous stampede on the other side of the door.

“Move!” he screamed. He threw his arms out wide and plowed through the crowd to drive them out of the way.

The doors flew open, and statues poured forth. Not big utilitarian ones like Brock, but fancy, ornate sculptures.

They marched in ranks, like soldiers, but some wrongness afflicted them. They stuttered and spasmed. Twenty, thirty… more.

Most escapees had spilled out to the sides, but a few fell in the path of the statues. Others tried to drag their comrades out of danger.

Not one death. “No!” Cort screamed.

He ran into the fray, scooping up two fallen prisoners and tossing them out of the way.

Brock came charging in, his huge body crashing through the van of the statues before collapsing in their midst. The statues wriggled their way out from under him like cockroaches.

They crawled over him, beating him with weapons and fists. More and more black smoke billowed out.

“STOP!” Ansoir screeched, running past Cort. “STOP! PLEASE STOP!”

Cort went after him, gagging on the fumes. Ansoir had thrown himself across Brock’s body, his floofy afro bouncing around at the violence of his retching.

The statues were frozen except for their raised arms, which sputtered mid-attack, as if wrestling against some force.

Leira and Limmy ran around screaming, directing the scattered prisoners into the now wide-open manor.

Cort gasped. These things could not attack Ansoir, the heir of Podexia.

He grabbed Ansoir under the arms and brandished him at the horde of statues like a warding talisman, using him to give the prisoners passage into the manor.

“Brock! Get up! Please get up!”

As Cort positioned himself in the manor's doorway, still swinging Ansoir around, he watched Brock try.

Grimacing, Cort looked away from the fallen Talus to scan the emptying field, hesitant to fully focus on the carnage, terrified at the prospect that they’d betrayed the promise to Isca. But he had to know.

His heart sank at each glistening puddle of blood that pocked the path. But there were no bodies. Not one death. How? This is impossible.

Everyone had made it inside except for Gwil. And Brock. The enemy statues piled around the doorway like a flock of feeding pigeons, unable to move against Ansoir.

***

Jackson stomped on Stondemaier’s face.

“Why can’t they touch your piece of shit son?”

Stondemaier lifted his crumbling head. “See, Ansoir has a… difficult personality. And he tends to treat everyone quite poorly. Knowing this, and knowing that my creations are not without temperament, I have always engendered them with an innate inability to harm my son.”

The sheriff stomped on him again. “Turn it the fuck off or I kill Ophelia.”

“I can only beg that you kill me first,” Stondemaier said.

“Argh!”

“Teddy,” Stondemaier rasped. “We should call the Leviathan for aid.”

Jackson laughed, then chugged the rest of his whiskey and slammed the bottle down on Stondemaier’s face. “Someone get this invalid geezer out of my sight before I kill him and destroy our army. Not that it’s worth a single damn, anyway.”

“Yes sir,” Bart said as he dragged Stondemaier away.

***

Night had fallen. The Martyr’s Wound shone bright, spitting crimson light across the gardens.

As Gwil danced around with the remaining three Taluses, he realized he was alone in the gardens. Thanks to the light shining through the open manor doors, he could see that his comrades had made it inside.

A horde of statues was amassed at the entrance, but it looked like Cort and… Ansoir? were somehow holding them at the threshold.

Gwil smiled as he saw it, written in the Nirva that drove the Taluses. They would not harm the son of the man who loved them so. They would not hurt their brother.

And then he saw Brock in that pile, struggling, leaking Kaia.

Gwil sprinted forward, and the Taluses chased after him. He spotted a broken pillar lying along the path to the entrance.

He repositioned the pillar, then got it rolling ahead of him and used it to plow through the legs of the gathered statues.

Gwil reached Brock, reinforced his wrists, and started pushing. His reforming hand was soggy and bloated, like pasta left too long in the water, but the bones had grown back.

The statues gave him a terrible beating. He hunched his shoulders up and lowered his head beneath his arms. Metal and stone cracked against his back—a merciless barrage.

He kept pushing. Ethereal vapor streamed from his skin as his Nirva blazed against the damage. A tingling numbness stole through his spine. His vision doubled, turned into swirling soup. Turned black.

Gwil kept pushing.

Their attacks landed like so many hammers, clapping like thunder against Gwil’s bones. One of the Taluses struck his elbow, and his arm went dead. He pushed with his shoulder.

He could feel Brock’s piddling attempts to help. And then Brock’s body scraped against a hard surface instead of soft dirt.

The assault on his body ended. Gwil collapsed.

His head swam through a storm-churned sea of Yalda’blood. Prismatic foam capped the waves. Countless faces floated in the water, like a school of fish. They screamed in perfect harmony.

“Stay right there, Ansoir,” he heard Cort say. “Don’t move a single fucking millimeter.”

Gwil’s limp form was scooped up and cradled in strong arms. He recognized Leira’s touch on his cheek, cool and soothing. He saw only her eyeflower, abloom against the bloody sea.

“Is Brock okay?” That was Ansoir. “Is he okay?”

Gwil’s eyes flickered open and he winced at some blinding bright light above.

Gwil turned his head at a thumping sound and saw Brock lying beside him. The Talus was pounding his fist against the floor with the steady rhythm of a drum.

Gwil sat up and Leira hugged him to her chest to keep him upright. He felt her fingers raking through clumps of blood in his hair.

Then she clutched him by his cheeks. “Gwil, are you okay? Can you hear me?”

Gwil saw Ansoir standing in the door, looking over his shoulder at Brock. The little lord was smiling. Gwil thought the smile suited his absurd afro better than his usual sneer.

“Buzzard can fix him up,” Gwil tried to say, but he heard himself and it sounded like, “Blerwgwarhugn.”

He raised his arms over his head and arched out his back until it cracked. Sensation flooded through his body. He stretched out his jaw and flicked his tongue around. “Ah, that’s better.”

Leira smiled, and the lotus bud in her eye twitched.

Gwil’s stomach grumbled like a feral demon. A few of the escapees looked over, likely thinking some wild beast had appeared.

“Woah,” Gwil said, swaying with lightheadedness. “I’m hungry.”